When will oil demand peak? Forecast increasingly cloudy: IEA

More conservative scenario makes its way back into report amid US pressure

- Brad Plumer

The world's leading energy agency is backing away, sort of, from its view that global demand for fossil fuels could very well peak by the end of the decade.

Two years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) caused a stir when it published a widely read analysis suggesting that the world's use of oil, gas and coal could start to decline by the 2030s because of energy policies many governments were pursuing. The prospect that fossil fuel demand might soon peak was seen as a potential turning point in efforts to slow climate change.

But in a major new report published on Nov 12, the energy agency has a different message about a peak in fossil fuel use: It is complicated.

The agency's latest World Energy Outlook - a comprehensive report on global energy trends - still includes its previous "stated policies" scenario, essentially projecting that countries will continue enacting policies that help tackle climate change and adopting solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles at a rapid clip, potentially leading to a decline or plateau in the use of oil, gas and coal by 2035.

Unlike in 2024, however, the agency is also including a more conservative "current policies" scenario that assumes countries will not enact any additional energy policies and will face obstacles in shifting to cleaner forms of power.

The Trump administration had pressured the agency to include this scenario, which sees oil and gas demand rising steadily through 2050, leading to significantly more global warming.

The report's authors say that neither scenario should be considered a definitive prediction about the future. Instead, the scenarios are intended to allow politicians to see the consequences of different policy choices.

"There can be no single or simple view on how the global energy outlook might develop," the authors wrote.